Saint Paul - General Topics

[BikesOnFilm]

The Downtown Saint Paul Lunds & Byerlys will be closing at the end of March: https://www.twincities.com/2025/03/07/d ... -march-26/

[BigIdeasGuy]

Another body blow for DT St. Paul

https://www.yahoo.com/news/st-paul-alli ... p_catchall

[BikesOnFilm]

James Crockarell keeps sapping Downtown Saint Paul's vitality, even from beyond the grave.

[nate]

I work down here and yeah, it feels quite ominous to have an entire city block go dark essentially overnight. And there's really no source of help on the horizon: the Madison Equities properties continue to tank, any new investment at Central Station or the river is years away, the State has vacated their presence in the core, lost the grocery store, smaller companies moving out, housing conversions need their lease-up period (and honestly, what's the draw for folks to live down here these days)...

Hopefully between Ecolab, Securian, the museums, and Xcel Center there's enough of a base to sustain downtown til whatever comes next...but it's hard not to feel pretty damned pessimistic these days.

[seanrichardryan]

Madison Equities parking ramp at 6th & Wall was just condemned as well.

[BikesOnFilm]

Hopefully between Ecolab, Securian, the museums, and Xcel Center there's enough of a base to sustain downtown til whatever comes next...but it's hard not to feel pretty damned pessimistic these days.

Unscientific sample size of two, but the hockey fans I know are hoping a new Wolves/Lynx stadium lures the Wild over to Minneapolis. Considering updates for Xcel are in the long, perennial queue of Saint Paul projects hoping for state funding, would it be completely unexpected if that happened?

[MNdible]

I'd be awfully surprised if that happened. St. Paul historically gets more than its fair share of state largesse for projects like this, and especially now with their downtown suffering, I just can't see the legislature supporting a Wild move.

I do think it would be great if our mid-sized metro wasn't trying to support two competing arenas when much larger metros have NBA and NHL teams sharing a venue, but I think this bit of the Twin Cities rivalry is unavoidable.

[thespeedmccool]

Madison Equities parking ramp at 6th & Wall was just condemned as well.

If I were the city/county, I would be doing everything in my power to dispossess Madison Equities of all their downtown properties.

They clearly don't care and are happy to see the properties decline until they're condemned. Total slumlords.

[Rube Dali]

Madison Equities parking ramp at 6th & Wall was just condemned as well.

If I were the city/county, I would be doing everything in my power to dispossess Madison Equities of all their downtown properties.

They clearly don't care and are happy to see the properties decline until they're condemned. Total slumlords.

https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-ne ... -to-vacate

[Rube Dali]

City Council gets thrown under the bus(may be paywalled):
https://www.startribune.com/an-unseriou ... /601242635

[thespeedmccool]

City Council gets thrown under the bus(may be paywalled):
https://www.startribune.com/an-unseriou ... /601242635

I'll read a single word written by Andy Brehm when he's no longer a breathless Republican hack. Not that I think St. Paul has made very good policy decisions recently, but Brehm is just trying to cash in on "LOL DFL city bad" more than he wants to help anyone solve any problem.

More importantly, I think there are cities in this country significantly more poorly governed than St. Paul (Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles) that are doing fine right now, and that should tell you that it's not St. Paul's fault so much as "the national economy doesn't support cities like St. Paul very well right now." When Trump tanks the economy, cheap office space in low cost-of-living states will suddenly become all the rage for start-ups, and St. Paul (if properly positioned for it) will have a little renaissance.

(As a side note, this is why I think the "tear down empty downtown offices" discussion is way, way premature.)

Right now, things are tough, but I think St. Paul should mostly stay the course by investing in the community rather than buy into whatever corporate-fealty or austerity Brehm is selling (though I would probably kill rent control.)

[seanrichardryan]

Surprised he didn't work in 'woke' and 'DEI' somewhere.

[MNdible]

I mean, it can both be true that Andy Brehm is a breathless Republican hack taking cheap shots at St. Paul, and also that the St. Paul (and Minneapolis) city council are more concerned with performative BS that makes the left online fringe feel good while ignoring basic good governance issues.

[bubzki2]

He commutes from St. Paul to Wayzata. Dude is insane on those grounds alone.

[Rube Dali]

Alliance Bank Center skyway is now closed except for access to the garage.
https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/st- ... nk-center/

[Rube Dali]

https://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2025 ... struggles/

[nate]

Thanks for sharing the Lindeke article. He continues to be the best.

Since the article mentions it, Walgreens has the feel of being on its last leg these days and I will be completely unsurprised if they're the next domino to fall. Limited stock on the shelves, what is there is wildly disorganized. I've tried to support them with lunchtime errands but even that is becoming untenable...besides which, I'm kinda f_____g done shopping at stores that lock up their products. I get it, shoplifting is an issue....the best solution can't be ruining the experience for the vast majority of your customers. Side rant.

Anyways it is kind of interesting to think about the relative health of individual blocks in St Paul because the picture is more complex than "Downtown is Dead". There are areas of relative health in the office market: the Ecolab, Wells Fargo, Town Square, and Securian blocks are at least functional. Pockets of small business activity still exists - book shops, restaurants, coffee shops. There are still a chunk of people living there. The Xcel, Ordway, and museums still draw people downtown for all kinds of events. The question is how to stop the contagion from spreading.

[twincitizen]

Bill to change the definition of “blight” include “vacant or underused properties”.
https://finance-commerce.com/2025/04/mi ... sion-bill/ (unlocked)

As these bills are being discussed to create additional incentives for conversion, I'd urge the legislature to be careful about creating unintended consequences. e.g. owners keep bad buildings / bad conversion candidates around for long periods of time instead of tearing them down for new development, or finite incentives are blown on a small number of really expensive/difficult projects. I increasingly think some office buildings will just need to be demolished.

Do we really want to direct tens/hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars converting the Alliance Bank, US Bank, or Securian buildings into housing? They are not good candidates. If any of these are not going to be full of office workers, then they should be torn down sooner rather than later so they can be replaced with new development more quickly. Replacing those office buildings with 5-over-1 apartment buildings may not meet some everyone's ideal for building height downtown, but they would be better than the alternative right now.

Of course, it's a separate question if there is any demand for more housing in downtown St. Paul. We'll see how the very expensive Landmark Tower apartments lease up. But putting aside the demand question, I still think in some limited cases a vacant lot might be better for downtown St. Paul right now than a vacant blighted office building attracting vagrancy and crime. I realize that argument sounds pretty similar to the mindset that led to urban renewal and removal of Mpls' gateway district, but I think we can agree that the situations are not the same, the buildings in question are not the same.

[BigIdeasGuy]

I think it's way to easy too blame DT STP struggles strictly on 1 bad landlord. While he almost certainly does have an outsized influence on where DT STP is at, he isn't the only cause. Solely blaming Madison Equities leaves out a lot of context of larger economic forces outside of anyone's control along with giving a local leaders a pass for their inactions or poor decisions that have lead us to this point.

Along with that laying it everything at the feet of Jim Crockarell it allows everyone to say "well Madison is gone so everything is all fix now" instead of having the long, hard conversation needed to bring DT STP back

[mattaudio]

It took a half century, but it's interesting to see how many old pre-WWII industrial buildings became hotspots despite decades of underuse or disuse. Is there any way to adapt these old buildings for the small-scale industrial, studio spaces, breweries, and other destinations similar to those areas in Northeast Minneapolis, Midway, etc? Or is it just too hard to adapt a midcentury office midrise vs a pre-war industrial space? Could work be done to get active uses in the podiums of these buildings even if the tower portions are mothballed?

The problem with this central part of DT St. Paul is exacerbated by not having any focus of attraction whether a square like Mears Park or Rice Park, or an amenity-rich streetscape. The streets feel simply like funnels for cars to get to parking ramps for office workers. State/agency buildings reinforce the dullness, like the Met Council building or Metro Square. St. Paul should pick a street like Robert or Minnesota and create a focus. It's just too much to think everything can recover if there's no point of focus.

Idea: focus on 5th St east to west and Robert St north to south as residential corridors, and forget about the rest.

5th St... great terminating vistas/amenities at St Paul Hotel/Rice Park and CHS Field. Passes Rice Park. Has good transit. Focus on: Conversion of Alliance Bank midcentury tower for housing (but try to undo at least the parking garage over Cedar St), good frontage for the Central Station development, and activating frontages and adding housing. 5th Already has landlords who have done recent improvements and have more skin in the game such as Osborne 360.

Demolish the US Bank building which is nearly an entire block of concrete podium, former auto bank, etc. Roll into that as a centerpiece Phase II after Central Station. Find a good landlord who and subsidize some major renos and streetscape improvements around 5th/Robert such as redoing the First National Bank MCM/parking podium. Open up the frontage of the Empire Building and 370 Jackson and pursue residential conversion.